Hey everyone, just thought I'd introduce a creature I thought of a few days ago...I found out about spore about a week ago while reading the New Yorker (there was an article in there about Will Wright and his new Evolution Game).I was instantly captivated by the idea and quickly checked it out on my computer. I watched gameplay videos for a few days and finally stumbled upon SporeWiki, and decided I would make a creature.so...If you guys have any advice or anything, please tell me, I'm all new to the forums and to the Spore community and would gladly accept it.Without further ado, Here is my Agnoculus!I posted a few things on SporeWiki, cuz that's where I started out, so here is the link to the Agnoculus page: http://www.sporewiki.com/AgnoculusSo far I have all the basic information done and the page also links off to the Agnoculi's home planet, so you can look at that too.Finally, I also made the Agnoculi's ancestor, the "Oculus", and that's over there too...So yea, hope you all like it.

C.A.S Classifications:

Here are some pictures:First of all, the actual modern Agnoculus:And here is a pic of its primitive ancestor, the Oculus:

C.A.S Classifications:I made a new creature, called the Gillra, which is another sentient creature on Epun.Like the Agnoculus, the Gillra also evolved from the ancient Oculus life form and became an intelligent species on the planet. On the other hand, this species stayed underwater, where they continued their development and growth and continued to acquire knowledge and intelligence (until the "Element wars", which I'll hopefully talk about sometime later). Just like the agnoculus, they have one big eye, a large cicular tooth-lined mouth, and vibration sensors for hearing (which they seemed to have evolved independently from the Agnoculus). They use 6 paddle-like limbs to slowly move through the water. These limbs are bulky and don't allow for much grace or speed, but they are useful in that they give them increased stability and maneauvring underwater.They have a series of gills all along their backs for breathing, and they use two branching tentacles to grab on and move/manipulate objects.Finally, they have a prehensile tail with a series of suckers on it for pulling things along behind them, such as prey, or, in more modern times, equipment and bulky objects.On the end of its tail is a small pointed dart-like growth, which is simply a remnant from one of their poisonous ancestors, and does not in fact serve them any use anymore.

The first thing to understand about Epun is its bizarre orbit, as it explains many of the phenomena and characteristics of the planet. - First of all, Epun is not a normal planet in that does not orbit around its solar system's sun (called Visum), like most other life-bearing planets do. In fact, it orbits around a large gas giant, Defastrum, which in turn orbits around Visum. - The second interesting fact about Epun's orbit is that its orbit plane is nowhere near the same angle as that of the other planets around Visum: It's tilted almost 90 degrees! It is hypothesized that a large planet-sized object must have collided with Defastum during the Visum System's formation, giving it a very unique spin: it seems to "roll", its rotational axis always aligned along its orbit plane, not perpendicular like normal planets (very much like the terran planet Uranus, which has an axial tilt of 98 degrees). To help you visualize, this means that for a quarter of the year, one of Defastrus's poles will always be facing the sun, then for the next quarter-year, the sun rises and sets along the equator normally, and then the next quarter the opposite pole will allways be facing the sun, and so on and so forth... - This large collision between Defastrus and another mysterious object is also said to have engendered Epun's birth, which orbits around its "mother planet" (defastrus) along its equator (Epun's rotational axis is parallel to defastrum's rotational axis) due to strong tidal pulls much like those between the terran Earth and Moon.

Seasons (I dont really talk about seasons at all in the below paragraph but w/e, I didnt really know what else to name it... )

- The most important thing to note about Epun is that most of the heat it recieves comes not from the sun, but from its mother planet! Defastrus, a giant gaseous planet almost six times the size of jupiter, orbits quite far from Visum, and the heat generated by this far-off sun would not have been enough to support life on Epun. Instead, due to its large size and specific chemical components, Defastrus generates enough heat to keep Epun constantly warm: - Defastrus's gravity is so great that its inner core is compacted to the point of reaching incredible temperatures, and these diffuse accross the surface and into space (just like the gaseous planets in the terran solar system, especially Jupiter, but to a much higher degree of intensity). - Another reason why Defastrus is so warm is explained by the Kelvin-Helmholtz effect, which is when a large planet cools down and in doing so releases heat out into space (Again, the terran gaseous planets also show this effect, but not quite as much as Defastrus) - Because of these effects, the Agnoculi living on Epun consider their mother planet a star that never quite made it, hence Defastrus's name, which means "failed star".

The Agnoculus, throughout their evolution-span (like life-span, but for a whole species... ), went through many religious and philosophical revolutions and developped many different religions. These ranged from monotheistic to polytheistic, radical, cultist, creationist, etc. The list goes on for a very long time, and it would be impossible to describe every single one of these religions and different ideologies. I'll talk about some other religions later once I get past the first few things i need to address (I'm going to try describing the different ages that the Agnoculus civilization goes through in chronological order as I post) but this is a sneak peak into one of the main and longest-lasting religions that these creatures took part in (I just couldn't ignore my FIRST FAN REQUEST!!!)

Imperfectionism:The Agnoculus have often found it easy to consider themselves the "odd-one-out": They are very different from other races on their planet, especially with their odd number of legs and the other unique features of theirs. From this idea sprung a bizarre ideology that was first introduced by a kind of philosophic and scientific prophet at the beginning of the Unification Age called Ergon. This individual hypothesized that the whole Agnoculus race was a "heavenly mistake", and from the very beginning should have been doomed to disappear due to its bizarre shape and characterisitcs."We are ungraceful and ugly creatures," he said "and how, in such a perfect and harmonious universe, could such bizarre creatures as ourselves possibly exist?""But," He discussed, "As we can all feel our own presence in this world, we know that our race still lives, and that we are not obliterated. This means that we must have been spared some horrible fate by a higher mind, saved by such beings as we may never comprehend".He argued that should the Agnoculus lose favor under these mysterious saviors's eyes, they would instantly be obliterated, and disappear from the world in the time it takes for a bolt of lightning to come down from the heavens and strike the earth. But if the Agnoculus race stayed in their favor, he believed, they would be able to perform supernatural feats, backed by these mysterious entities. He believed in the power of prayer, worship, and offerings, and quickly gathered followers and built temples and altars to please these mysterious unknown gods that he hypothesized about. This religion evolved along with the race itself, and although it changed much over the thousands of years leading up to the modern ages, the basic ideas advanced by Ergon so long ago are still used as the foundations of the Imperfectionist Ideological Society of Epun today, in modern times (the most notable change is that the "mysterious savior entity" that Ergon hypothesized about eventually came to be considered more of a force of nature or spiritual magic, and not an actual God).

Here's a reminder on the Ancient Oculus creature and some evolution information (how it eventually evolved into the Agnoculus and Gillra creatures):

BASIC INFORMATIONThe Oculus is one of the oldest known descendants of the Agnoculus and several other sapient species on Epun. It represents the foundation of the plutelium ("Many Arms") taxonomic clade, and many species on Epun can trace back their evolutionary ancestry back to this creature. Due to this fact, it was deemed important by Agnoculus scientists in the Genetic Age to gain a more fundamental and profound understanding of this creature.Classification and Nomenclature: The Oculus is, as stated in the introduction, the foundation of the plutelium (which means "many arms", designating its many tentacles) clade on Epun. Its scientific name is therefore simply Plutelium Primoris (or, "the first plutelium"). It is more commonly called the "Oculus" by its more modern descendants (the Agnoculus) because they believe that the Oculus was simply a non-sentient version of themselves. Some modern Agnoculus geneticists even held the Oculi with a certain religious respect, as a kind of primitive creator-like figure.Size: They have a very variable size, adults range from 5 centimeter to 30 centimeter tentacle-spans (or "diameter" of the Oculus if all of its tentacles are fully extended). The central eye ranges from 2 to 4 centimeters in radius, and so does not vary much between individuals.Lifespan: Most live between 1 and 8 human months.Anatomy: The Oculus are simple creatures, moving around using their tentacles to swim, feeding through four filter-mouths positioned on their most prominent tentacles (these filter mouths enable it to catch plankton as it floats by or slowly absorb nutrients from Epun jellyfish or other larger organisms). One of their most important characteristics, of course, is their single eye, which is relatively simple and only allows for a small range of visibility. It is quite large because it enables the Oculus to see in the very dark environment of the deep-sea trenches and habitats, but they are colour-blind and cannot percieve depth like their land-dwelling descendants. Another interesting characteristic is that unlike most tentacle'd creatures, the Oculus does not have completely shapeless tentacles: They are strengthened by a kind of endoskeleton which is in fact a system of "macrotubules", much like the microtubules in individual cells.Reproduction: The Oculus have a simple reproductive process: After they reach maturity (in about one human week), they begin directly releasing spores and eggs into the water every few weeks or so, at periodic intervals. The male spore and female eggs meet and the young grow quickly. Since they are usually far from their parents by the time they have grown, they have to fend for themselves, explaining the low survival rate of offspring: for every thousand or so female eggs released (the typical periodic amount for an average Oculus) only about half of these will become fertilized, and of this half, only 1 or 2% will survive to sexual maturity. This periodic cycle of reproduction continues indefinitely, until the individual dies.

EVOLUTIONThe Oculus was a very effective creature survival-wise. It was already one of the largest creatures under the water at the time it was developing. Its filter-mouths enabled it to feed both off meat (if you'd call small shrimp-like creatures with chitin exoskeletons "meat"), or, if food was scarce, filter plankton out of the water. It's many tentacles gave it great flexibility and agility underwater, as well as a higher-than-average strength thanks to the strong macro-filaments in each tentacle. Looking at all this now, we can easily understand how this creature evolved into the two main sapient species on the planet, it was already the most developed organism around in post-primeval-soup times! As depicted in the picture, we see how the Oculus eventually evolved into both the Gillra and Agnoculus creatures by branching off on two evolutionary routes:

The Agnoculus: To eventually become the modern Agnoculus creature, the Oculus had to go through several separate stages of evolution. In the picture, we see how at first it developed into a more amphibian-like creature like a terran frog. At this point, the tentacles were beginning to form into functional limbs a new, stronger endoskeleton developing from the initial system of macro-filaments. It is also at this point that the claws filled with sensory tentacles began evolving and the filter-mouth developed into a tooth-lined opening. Then, when this organism finally moved onto land, the 5 limbs were already fully developed, and all that was left was for the Agnoculus to evolve its long neck and various other minor evolutionary changes.

The Gillra:The Gillra, an underwater-living creature, also evolved from the ancient Oculus. In this case, the Oculus initially had to mutate into a more fish-like creature: its tentacles changed into flipper-like limbs to speed itself up, it developed a jaw, and it started using actual gills to breathe. At this stage, this organism also developed a short sucker-covered tail with a poisonous dart end for defense against predators. In the second stage of this particular branch of the Oculus's evolution, the flippers became real paddle-limbs, the tail became more developed (although the poisonous dart began receding), and, most importantly, what had initially been two simple sensory tentacles on the creature's head became fully-functional branching tentacles for manipulating objects and tools with better precision.